IrfanView Thumbnails cant see "camera or imaging device" (MTP/PTP protocol)

[richlach]

For many years, all USB connecting digital cameras have
showed up with their own drive letter, a MSC (mass storage class)
device like any disk drive or flash drive etc.

Lately, some digital camera manufacturers have been setting up
their cameras to connect with MTP/PTP protocol which show up
as a “camera or imaging device”, with no drive letter.
IrfanView thumbnails cannot “see” these kind of devices.
I was told by Nikon that they are doing this at the request of
Microsoft who want people to use Windows photo transfer and
editing applications, which basically suck.
Some cameras I have seen allow you to go into a setup menu
and actually select which USB protocol you prefer but a new
Nikon L18 point and shoot I bought only allows this new
protocol which basically means you cannot use irfanview to
transfer your photos to the PC. Most people deal with this
by just popping the chip out of the camera and connecting
with a card reader, which is fine but not as convenient as
just plugging in the camera.

So it seems there are 3 ways to deal with this:
-use a card reader
-get all the camera makers to maintain the MSC protocol
-get IrfanView thumbnails to be able to see MTP/PTP devices
in its folder tree

any thoughts on how to deal with this change since the camera
makers cant seem to leave well enough alone?
(if it works, don’t mess with it)

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Please post only one thread in one forum for one topic.

Can't you transfer your pictures with Windows Explorer?

[richlach]

prefer to use Irfanview

I thought the point of the Irfanview forum was to encourage the use of Irfanview...? Why use explorer to copy from the camera when Irfanview
thumbnails works better?

anyhow, I just dont know why the old protocol of having a camera emulate a drive has been changed. I blame Microsoft for pushing the camera makers into this.

I have tried the MS camera wizard. It sucks. Everytime you copy a bunch of new photos from a camera it renames them "photo 1, photo2 etc.".
Obviously if you later want to combine photos into the same folder,
it will need to overwrite. What genius at microsoft came up with that???
The Nikon copy and edit software is just as bad.

I just like my Irfanview and will use a card reader to emulate a mass storage device with a drive letter
so that Irfanview thumbnails can see it.
Thanks,
Rich

[Mij]

I thought the point of the Irfanview forum was to encourage the use of Irfanview...? Why use explorer to copy from the camera when Irfanview thumbnails works better?

You do not need to use the thumbnail features of Explorer. Just use it to select all the images from "Camera or Imaging device" and copy or move them to a folder on your hard drive, the same as you probably do with images from your flash disk. Then you can use Irfanview to do all the sifting of what you want to keep and where to put them.